In between twitter updates tonight, I kept seeing replies to the same email pop up from my Outlook. That email came from an entrepreneur who was looking for “partners” or possibly funding. There’s nothing wrong with that, right?

Well, try blasting that to a large VC distribution list, with that same distribution list (mail reflector) in the From: field. Bad combination.

Most of the replies are “take me off your distribution list ASAP”, “how did I get on this list” or a whole bunch of “me too’s” — total replies now exceed 4075. A few firms were kind enough to reply to the entrepreneur’s question, like OpenView, LightSpeed, and Mayfield, with very public declines.

Kudos to Jack Biddle of Novak Biddle and Elizabeth de Saint-Aignan of Nautic Partners for realizing that every reply only perpetuated the pain.

I was going to reply with a similar refrain, but thought this blog post might do more good…

UPDATE: @peterkaminski noticed too, counting over 75 replies, with better terminology. To be precise, this looks more like a mail reflector than a distribution list.

About

Thanks for stopping by. In case we haven't met before, I'm Dan Rua, Managing Partner of Inflexion Partners, an early-stage venture capital fund based in Florida and focused on the Southeast US. Prior to Inflexion I was a partner with Draper Atlantic, DFJ's first east coast fund based in Northern Virginia. Prior to that I co-founded an email software company and was an engineer with IBM's Networking Software Labs in RTP, NC.

This blog is for sharing stories and discussing entrepreneurs, venture capital, technology, and Florida -- particularly when I can provide perspective unique from the typical Boston (B) or Silicon Valley (S) view. Inflexion is my third fund and all my funds have focused on building world-changing companies in regions outside the BS...